1 First Awakening

Shutting her eyes from the afternoon heat, blood trickled down her forehead. She clutched her scythe tight like how her chest felt tight.

Huff... Huff...

In a moment, a short memory flashed her mind.

'WTFF?!'

Bang! Bang! Crack.

She grits her teeth. As death once again came for her, the last scene from her past life before she died resurfaced. He was in his restroom for a morning poop routine from playing Deck of Cards Royale all night when he was startled by a cockroach that crawled on his shoulders. Because of shock, he suddenly stood up and attempted to run when he forgot that his shorts were still on his ankles. As a result, he tripped himself and slam his head on the sink before smacking hard on the cold hard white tiles.

Back to the present, she grimaced hard as she's standing on death's door once again. He was recently reincarnated into his favourite game, Deck of Cards Royale, as his customized female avatar but now, it hasn't even been a year yet he's once again dying.

She took deep breaths and calmed her raging mind.

'I refused to die like this. I was just born three months ago!'

"Just give up kid! I'll spare you if you'll be our slave. Your too beautiful for your own good! Haha!" a tall man with a snout beard and round belly said while holding a saber.

'Damn it! I don't want to die! Whatever it takes!'

Just then she felt a strange explosion coming from her heart. It furiously surged through her entire body like how electricity ran to power a machine. She opened her eyes and her once deep blue eyes became slithing red with black sclera. Thin black veins began to ran from her eyes to her temples, her fangs grew, and her nails became sharp and black, all while covered in a black crimson fire.

The man saw the sudden change and felt a cold chill on his spine.

'She was on the verge of death a second ago but now I can feel her powers growing. What's this strange power?! Was she toying me all this time?!'

His furious pride refusing to back down, he grip his saber and dash his way towards the girl. But before the man could reach her, she stood up and swung her scythe to meet the incoming saber before twirling it once causing a small explosion upon impact.

"Tch! A small ounce of power-up is nothing to be proud of kid. You should have gave up when I gave you the chance!" and jumped with his sword in the air.

Unfortunately, Luna who hasn't adjusted to her new found power failed to control the outburst and emitted a deathly aura. He mastered one of the most difficult game in two years but never did he fully understood how it works for only a few months personally. Surprisingly, the Magnus' Eyes activated with only a thought and saw the most probable thing that will happen in three seconds.

She extended her scythe and also lunged towards the man before aiming the curved blade to his neck. Because he was in midair, he couldn't change his trajectory and could only suck in air before his head popped off his neck, dissipating a white smoke from his body.

'HA! Congratulations, young crumb! I didn't expect you'll awaken much sooner. Really good! However, I lost a bet. Sigh. Anyway, I'll be meeting you quite often after your second awakening. 'Till then, take care of yourself!'

"Awakening? Was that it? The power surge?"

After the crackling voice ended, the system popped a notification.

Ding!

[ Congratulations, Luna! You have achieved your first awakening! Additional 20% boost to all stats.

Open 'Profile' to see changes.

Open 'More' for more information. ]

'Wait... So the voice earlier was not the system? I thought there were some changes to the system after the awakening thing but what was that?' she once again closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Her demonic appearance started to fade as her eyes changed back to blue, the black veins ran back to her eyes and nails shrank back to its normal size and color while the unusual fire desipated.

Luna then sat on a rock and began wiping its blades after giving off a sigh. Disregarding his awful death, he had a lot of questions after waking up inside the world of this game. Why's he back and how did he end up here were just the beginning of it.

'I guess that's why parents tell their children to not play games too much.'

Forcing to find the answers will be futile so surviving will be the very first priority.

Deck of Cards Royale isn't one's usual card games. It's a role-playing game that made the cards its characters with an interesting story. One can pick either the King, Queen, Jack, and Ace of the four type of cards which are hearts, spades, clubs, and diamonds. Of course, so as the Joker.

As Luna had quite pondered, the game characters' powers and skills reflects their symbols like how the Heart characters revolve their skills around manipulation of the mind and give illusions to the enemy by peeking one's deepest fear, strength, memories, almost everything that you didn't know you hold dear, hidden inside the heart. Or how the Spade characters can manipulate weapons and summon it by will, or the Club characters that has the ability to create elixirs and buildings and forge weapons of high quality, and how the Diamond characters possess of similar replications of the power of cosmos and stars into skills.

But the Joker is different. Unlike the others who have their kingdoms, people, and subordinates, Jokers only have their small clan and can't even reproduce.

Long story short, Jokers were exiled and are continuously being hunted because of their ability to possess one to two of the ruler's powers, some can even have three although it is a very rare case. Given the greed of the four rulers, they temporarily cast their feuds over who would rule above all and eliminate them first to avoid the possibility of Jokers overthrowing them in their seats of power.

Because they do not know how their reproduction works, the rulers assumed that Jokers concieve children only within their own blood and family. So they planned an ambush and massacre the small clan of at most twenty existing Jokers at that time. Even though they were powerful, death is inevitable if the battle was held in quantities.

This'll lead one to conclude that if a gamer chooses the other card characters, their main quest would be to annihilate the Joker's race for normal difficulty and fight to claim world dominance for the hard difficulty, whereas, the quest if one would choose the character Joker would be vengeance and defeat the four rulers for normal difficulty and claim the domination of the whole cosmos instead for the hard difficulty.

That is why he chose the Joker as his avatar.

'Well, what can I say... difficult stuffs do make life worth living. I mean, I live to play but that goes different to others.'

She thought about 'More Information' as a bigger teal window appear before her.

[ √ First Awakening

The Demicore Power Burst.

An explosion of raw demon power confined in the demicore which is located inside the human heart occurs. The explosion of raw demon power that the demon who chose to give you his/her blessing will took place after you achieve your first highest form of will and determination in a face of danger and death.

The first awakening is blood and neural mutation. The power of the demon that blessed you will vigorously run through one's blood stream and nerves making you utilize their power whenever summoned.

Choose 'Path Towards Mastery of Thy Blessing' for training regime.

Ｏ Second Awakening

Locked.

Ｏ Third Awakening

Locked.

Ｏ Final Awakening

Locked. ]